


Fifteen Minutes

by Sioux



Series: Twenty Past [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Strike Back
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2015-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-18 07:30:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4697510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sioux/pseuds/Sioux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thirty years in the future from the present day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fifteen Minutes

John checks his old medical bag for the supplies he will require this morning. Traditionalist to the core, he likes the heft and weight of the old leather. He picks up his hat turning to the mirror as he sets it on his head. He fingers his bare top lip. After having a moustache for the past three years his top lip feels rather odd. He knows he is probably being silly but, he just felt he needed to get rid of the 'tash, so, he got up early and shaved. 

The face looking back at him from the mirror also looks somehow different from usual and not just the lack of facial fungus. Hair, light grey, the change from dishwater blonde had been gradual at first, then things happened, his life turned upside down and inside out and suddenly, one morning, when he paid attention to his appearance he was completely grey. 

His face is becoming thinner, only to be expected, but the expression in his eyes isn't the usual sad, sombre one which he's come to expect. He pauses for a minute trying to work it out, then shrugs. It will come to him.

He waves his hand across the lighting panel. The hall becomes dark by degrees, keeping him safe from tripping until he exits his house.

He pulls the exterior door closed and says,

'Door...' he pauses. Usually he would tell the door to lock, it's keyed to his living voice print and his hand print through the door handle and the house computer obeys him and locks the door. Today there isn't much point in locking his house. It is still a house to him, not a home. Even though he's been living here for seven years it would never have become a home because there is always something missing. There is absolutely nothing inside he really cares about.

'Door unlock.'

'Query, door unlock?'

'Correct. Door unlock,' he repeats forcefully.

Even the bloody house computer is second guessing him!

Setting his hat more firmly on his head he limps as purposefully as he can down his garden path, out through the gate and onto the crumbling concrete track which passes for the nearest road. He walks through crepuscular grey, which could be early dark or early day, hard to tell at this point, towards a square shaped darker black than the surrounding dry, desert-like land. Crossing the track he strikes out across the sandy soil, making a bee-line for the house some one hundred metres away. Nearer he can make out lines of faint yellow flickering lights. Candles? As he walks the sun begins to clear the horizon, lending yellow and pink to the shadows, thinning them out and filling in detail.

His footsteps become louder as he walks across the wooden decking then up three steps to the veranda which surrounds the squat two-storey house. Along the three ground floor windowsills at the front someone has placed lit, fat white candles. With the early sunlight available it's more than enough to see pretty clearly. 

At the far end is a swing seat, a matching chair nearby and a table near to the chair. The table holds a full spirits bottle and three glasses, two of which have liquid in them at differing levels. 

His uneven footsteps pause momentarily as he beholds the swing seat to be occupied.

Two men. A reflection of the early sunlight against a glistening eye follows his progress as the grey haired head moves to keep him in view. Within two more steps he can see twin, silver, tear tracts running down his wrinkled cheek into his scruffy grey beard which has looked like that for as long as he's known the man. The figure coughs, a careful, soft cough. Scott. The second shape is curled up a little, his upper half laying on Scott, his lower half between Scott's legs on the swing seat. Michael. Mikey to Scott, Michael or Mike or Mr Bridges to everyone else. John knows that isn't his real name, just like Doctor John Waterford isn't his birth name either. They all have reasons to need to lie low in this place. 

It suddenly hits the doctor how very thin Michael has become, seemingly in the last few hours. He shouldn't have been surprised; he'd given him the diagnosis, he knew the progression of the disease. In some strange way it feels like it is only now that he can truly see how it has hollowed him out, leaving him as fragile as a blown egg.

Scott is holding Mike against his chest like a far too tall, malnourished baby. Indeed with his shirt unbuttoned all the way down he definitely appears to be trying to nurse the man on his hairy pectorals.

'Sorry Doc, we started without you,' Scott says, his voice gruff with tears and whisky.

The doctor pauses then continues forward. He puts his bag down on the table then leans over and gently checks for a pulse at Mike's neck, noticing the slight bruising as he does so. Clinically he notes the absence of rigor mortis and that the body is still warm, so he hasn't been dead for long, probably a matter of minutes. He places a hand on the top of Mike's head, making his own personal goodbye then sits carefully in the chair near Scott, his bones are aching in the early morning cool, despite the walk.

Scott turns to look at the Doc and gives a small tight smile through his tears.

'Bad? Sorry, stupid question,' John apologises.

Scott waves his hand in a 'forget it' gesture.

After a moment, Scott starts to speak, never once looking at either the man in the chair or the man in his arms who's head he continues to stroke. 

'He couldn't sleep last night...'

The doctor opens his mouth as if to speak but Scott continues, 'He said it wasn't pain, just restless, uncomfortable. He wouldn't let me adjust the machine.' Scott pauses and swallows. 'He wanted to make love instead, said it helped. Made him feel a lot better.' Scott turns his head to the Doctor. 'John, does sex really help or was he just trying to make me feel better?' 

A ghost of a smile touches the other man's lips before he replies, 'The act causes a massive release of endorphins and oxytocin. Helps with relaxation, emotional bonding and I've heard other patients say it helps. Makes pain or discomfort easier to bear.'

'Whaddayknow - right again Mikey,' he says softly and presses a kiss to the grey bristles on the top of his head then lays his cheek against the head resting on his chest.

'I take it he didn't sleep afterwards?'

Scott shakes his head. 'I woke up about midnight, he wasn't with me. Found him sitting out here.'

He closes his eyes and stops.

John leans forward and gently peels back one of Mike's eyelids, shining his small torch into the non-reactive orb. The whites are tinged slightly with yellow.

'Looks like he was developing another fever, there's signs of jaundice present.'

Scott nods. 'The last couple hit him really hard, he didn't want to go through another one. We sat out here, it was cooler for him. We talked about all the people we'd... um worked with...'

'Been on missions with,' John corrects him. 

Scott stops then huffs a laugh, 'Sorry Doc, I can't seem to keep it in mind you were a soldier too.'

'Don't worry about it,' John replies. He's silent for a moment before asking, 'Can you remember why you asked me out here?'

Scott gives him a dirty look. 'I'm not that far gone, yet!' he says dryly.

John grins, 'Just checking.'

'Did you get your test results.'

John nods.

'How long?' Scott asks.

'Does it matter?'

'Humour me.'

'Longer than Mike, a little less than you, maybe.'

'All the advances in medical science and that's the best they can do?'

'Yes, that's the best they can do. Don't forget we're living so far off the grid here we're lucky we don't still have to reply on opiates for pain relief.'

'Our little electronic friends here were developed for purely political reasons, Doc, sure as hell wasn't for our welfare,' Scott said, tapping the small square which had been implanted under the skin of his lower back when he'd received his diagnosis. Mike had one too. He assumed John had a similar implant.

'You're not wrong there,' John replies, unpacking three phials and an air hypo. He glances at Mike, then puts one phial aside. 'Why did you break his neck, why didn't Mike want to wait a bit longer?'

Scott tightens his arms around Mike's body and looks a little sheepish. John raises his eye brows, waiting.

'He asked me to,' Scott replies, evasively, not meeting his eyes. 'We watched the sun just start to rise, he kissed me and asked me to do it then.'

John's head lowers whilst his eyebrows are in danger of crawling off the top of his head.

'Alright, neither of us could remember whether you'd said this morning or tomorrow,' Scott admitted, in a rush.

John laughs in pained disbelief. 'Your comm system broken? And what were you going to do about yourself if I hadn't turned up?'

Reaching between them, Scott pulls out an old-fashioned gun.

'God, I haven't seen one of those for years. Is it loaded?' John asks.

'Hope so.'

John takes the weapon and checks, then empties the cartridges into his hand saying, 

'My way is far more pleasant and just as certain.' He puts the weapon down on the table and then puts the cartridges into his pocket before loading the air hypo. 

'A perk of being with a bloody mad chemist with a low boredom threshold for twenty-three years.'

'What is it again?'

'He called it a Brompton shot,' John answers with a smile.

'What's the joke?'

'You ever heard of a Brompton cocktail?'

Scott shakes his head.

'It was a concoction of various pharmaceuticals; heroin or morphine, ethyl alcohol, chloroform water and a syrup to disguise the bitter taste. Promotes pain relief and sociability in the terminally ill. Used mainly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My mad chemist changed some of the constituents so it could be injected and tightened up the time frame.'

Obligingly Scott rolls up his sleeve. 'How long do we have?' Scott asks.

'Fifteen minutes, give or take,' John replies, patiently. Scott's inability to remember some things is just a symptom of his illness. John, Scott and Mike have discussed this fairly constantly over the past weeks as firstly Mike's diagnosis was confirmed then John's then Scott's.

'Pretty bloody ironic, all three of us spent our lives dodging bullets only to all become terminally ill at the same time and need to do this,' John mutters.

'Always said if there is a God, he's got a bloody peculiar sense of humour.' Then, changing the subject, as John injects the full contents into his bloodstream he asks,

'Doc, why didn't you follow your partner when he died?' 

'A long time before he died, the mad bastard made me promise not to. He wanted me to move on and be happy after he'd gone, if he went first. As if anyone could follow him,' John says softly, with a smile, as he fits the second phial and injects himself.

'You've told me that before, haven't you?' Scott asks.

'Yeah, I have,' John replies, pulling his sleeve down and then smashing the third, unused phial under his heel. 'Don't want anyone having an accident with that one.' He picks up the bottle and pours himself a hefty measure and fills one of the other glasses before handing it to Scott.

'I'm glad he made you promise,' Scott says, taking the glass. At John's enquiring frown, he adds, 'We wouldn't have gotten to know you otherwise.'

'There is that,' he agrees. 'By the way, did you remember to make the bar and the bike shop over to Finn, or am I going to be spending my last fifteen minutes on Earth looking for the deeds?'

'No, Mikey did that last week.'

'What did you tell him?'

'Said we were going to have a last long bike trip around Canada. You don't seriously think we were going to tell him the truth, do you?'

'He's going to be hurt you didn't tell him.'

'He'll understand. He's forty-seven years old, and has made Mikey and me a grandfather three times over. He'll get the picture. And neither of us want the nippers to remember us like this.'

'What did he think of his father suddenly changing sides and marrying a man?' John asks curiously. 

Consciously John knows it's a side-effect of the drugs he's just injected, not to mention a manifestation of the strange sense of humour of the mad man who had invented it, but he can't seem to care that he's asking intensely personal questions.

'He loves Mikey like a second father, probably more than me, if truth be told. If we're happy, he's happy.'

'Why did you marry him?'

'Fell in love with the ugly, limey bastard, didn't I?' Scott laughs, taking another slug of whisky, then looking down at Mike. 'We'd been sharing quarters for a couple of years after we, umm, walked away from the army. We were making breakfast one Tuesday morning. We'd been for a run. He beat me, he was pleased about that. He barged into me with a hot cup of joe, scalded my arm, ran the cold faucet over it, all the time jabbering on about being sorry. So I kissed him, on the lips. Didn't know if I'd done it to shut him up or to tell him it didn't matter. Thought he was going to fucking kill me! He had his arm across my throat and my back against the wall so fast! Gave me the thousand yard stare and growled, 'I swear to God, if you're fucking with me... and, bang! Our first sexual encounter, against the wall in the fucking kitchen, door wide open. Turns out the only fuck this pussy magnet can trust to live with day in, day out is my partner, my fucking male partner. How's that for a cosmic joke?' Scott turns his face to John. 'TMI?'

'Yeah,' John agrees. 'TMI! And I will never think of your kitchen wall in the same way again.'

'Or the floor. Or the table, or all the chairs, or..'

'Stop!' John begs.

Scott gives a low, filthy laugh, then abruptly sobers.

'He put his life on the line so many times for me and when we got out of soldiering I couldn't imagine not seeing him every day. And, shit, when we finally got around to,' John gave him a warning look. 'Well, you know!' 

Scott laughs again as John says, 'Thankfully, no.'

'Anyway, I had to keep his hot sticky eyes off you, Doc,' he finishes, taking a large gulp of his drink. At John's questioning look, he continues, 'His type is blue-eyed blondes.' Scott grins. 'I'd just got him trained up, wasn't going to let you get all the benefit, so I dragged him off and tied the knot.'

John laughs. He wouldn't have been interested, even if Mike really had been. 

'I thought you two had been married for years!'

'Nah, six years. Been living in sin for twenty years though. When we did finally agree to tie knot, I told him if he ever played around on me like he did his wife, I'd cut his fucking balls off.'

John snorts, 'How romantic! I would have put money on you being the player, not him.'

'Hey, pussy magnet, yeah, never knowingly with a married one. Not only playing away, our Mikey, but fraternising with a Captain when he was still a Sergeant, no less. Brass balls, that right Mikey?' he says, affectionately to his husband, speaking normally as if he can still hear him.

John shakes his head at Mike's former foolhardiness.

'Rest assured, he never played away with this formally blonde haired, blue eyed Captain, at any point! Did his wife find out?'

'Kerry was a bright girl, I'm sure she suspected, either before or after Captain Kate died in the line of duty. Then Kerry was shot as a revenge attack on Mikey. He swore blind he would never put another woman, who didn't know the risks, in the line of fire again. He didn't either. He kept that promise.

'Enough of my awesome sex life. What's your story? Ever been married?'

'Yeah, two women. One after the other,' he adds quickly as he sees Scott's lascivious expression.

'Which one was the chemist?'

'Neither. The chemist was a he and I never married him. Never even kissed him. He was my flatmate. Had been there, before, during and after each disastrous marriage. My best friend. Him solving crimes and me chasing the criminals alongside, and patching him up when he needed it.' John stops. 'Until the day I couldn't.'

He looks across the intervening space at Scott. God, how many times had they sat in each other's houses, drinking and talking but they had never told each other anything as personal as this. And it felt good to get it out into the open.

'And you never...?'

John shakes his head. 'He didn't really do relationships. My mad chemist was a fair bit down the autistic spectrum. Extremely bright and could fake the emotions when needed, but he didn't seem to really feel them or know what to do with them.'

'But you loved him anyway?' Scott guesses from the expression on John's face. He nods, soothing the gaping hole at the admission with a gulp of alcohol.

'What happened?'

'He'd been asked to help out on a case for L.. a chief superintendent friend of ours. He was retiring in weeks, but he wanted this one off his books, it was worrying him. Turned out to be way more complex and the level of corruption went so much deeper than we ever suspected at first. They murdered our policeman friend first then they hacked our driverless car. He knew, somehow he knew, before they took control. He pushed me out of the car and told me to run and keep on running then shouted a name at me, twice, before the doors locked and they sent it screaming into a building at over ninety miles an hour. Killed him instantly and five other people who just got in the way.' John took a fortifying swallow of his whisky before continuing, 'When I was clearing out his stuff after the funeral I found deeds and a letter. In the eventuality of it all going to hell in a hand basket, he'd prepared us a bolt hole. The house here. He wanted me to leave and build myself a life here. That was because of a promise he made to me. He'd faked his own death once before, so he could keep me safe and go after a top-class criminal. When he finally got back I made him promise that he'd never do that to me again. And he didn't.'

'Did you get the fucker who murdered him?' Scott asks after a minutes silence.

'Yeah. I dropped of the radar, went 'travelling' to get over my grief. Really spent months getting close enough. His executive staff were all hand-picked and extensively background checked, so that was out, plus I would have been recognised. He had enough political clout to pretty much do whatever he wanted and was rich enough to pay off or threaten and murder those who didn't do what he wanted. He financed at least three Prime Ministers and ended up richer than all of them.'

John can see Scott is fascinated. Probably bringing back memories of his days in the army. Not that they'd ever actually discussed their past lives in detail, but they each knew the other had served.

'Don't stop there! What was your way in? Women? Booze? Men?'

'Gardens.'

'What?'

'Gardening. He bred roses. Was good at it too. Every few days the gardeners and their assistants, even the ones who were old and had learning difficulties, i.e. me, were cleared out of the way whilst he spent hours on his own in his greenhouse. My mad chemist had left copious notes on many varieties of poisons, some of which were plant safe but deadly to human life. I adjusted the mix so he wouldn't die easily and laced the soil in his precious rose beds the night before a visit was due. Wasn't as satisfying as putting a bullet between his eyes but it did take him the best part of a day to perish in agony, screaming for mercy and babbling about all his guilty misdeeds. Somehow, that was recorded and sown all over the web. As word spread, the international mourning at the premature death of 'A Great Man', stopped. I took his life and he destroyed his own reputation as he was dying.'

'Damn, Doc,' Scott says, admiringly. He tosses back the last of his whisky and holds out his glass for a refill with which John duly obliges.

Holding out his full glass towards John, Scott says, 'Before I get too pissed to speak, to Mike, to you and to me.'

'To Mike, to you and to me!' John replies as they both drink off the alcohol in one.

Scott lays back against the arm of the swing chair, the booze and drugs kicking in heavily now.

'Not long now, Mikey,' he whispers to his husband.

John is beginning to doze in the comfortable silence between them, when Scott speaks again, 'Doc, what did your mad chemist look like?'

John rouses himself with difficulty.

'Um, I thought he was amazingly handsome,' he slurs. 'Bluey green eyes, pale skin, slim but well muscled, loved skin tight designer suits...'

'Dark curly hair and wore a long, pretentious coat?' Scott asks, motioning climsily with his glass to the other side of the table.

The description sounds very familiar to John but he's having trouble turning his head, in fact, from his limited field of vision, all he can see is Scott, eyes closing, glass dropping from his hand, still holding Mike tight with his other arm. They look as if they have fallen asleep, peacefully, on the seat after making love. 

John's eyes slide peacefully closed too. He can't be bothered to speak any more, he's just tired. Tired and more than ready for a long, eternal sleep when a joyful shout of, 

'Mikey!' startles John so much he flinches and finds his paralysing lethargy dissipating. 

Moving very much easier than he thought he should be able to, he can see the back view of a younger man with short, dark hair striding away from him, towards another young but well built man, his boots rattling against the decking. The other man at the far end of the veranda, is dressed in fatigues and a dark t-shirt and back-lit by sunlight, making his face hard to see but John can see his arms are thrown wide, welcoming the dark haired man. 

The dark haired man who looks so much like a much younger version of his friend Damian Scott, or, as he is known in the little town at the far end of the back of beyond, Scott Michaels. So the other man must be...

'Well done, John. You got there eventually,' a very well-spoken, English voice congratulates him.

He turns, unable to believe his eyes or his ears. Dark hair, artfully ruffled into curls, pale face, changeable eyes alight with mischief and love, skin tight shirt, long coat, one hip leaning nonchalantly against the balustrade.

John throws himself into the man's arms, holding him as tight as he can.

'I've missed you too, my love,' the posh, baritone voice says softly.

John draws back a little, to look into the face he remembers from what seems like a lifetime ago. The same face and manner but, there is something different. Something in his eyes, a different expression. As if, as if this man can finally understand...

'I've always loved you, John. You're my heart and soul. I wasn't able to express it before.'

Seconds before the shimmering light envelopes them both it comes to John what he'd seen in his own eyes in the mirror that morning. Something which had been absent for many years. 

Hope.

**Author's Note:**

> No idea where this one came from. Started off intending to be a stream of consciousness from Damien Scott when Dr Watson popped up, wrote himself and Sherlock in and generally reconstructed my story.


End file.
